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An international team led by Uppsala University scientists has succeeded, for the first time, in depicting intact live bacteria with an X-ray laser. This technique, now described in the journal Nature Communications, can give researchers a clearer understanding of the complex world of cells.

More than 600 years after the bubonic plague wiped out about half of Europe, scientists still don’t fully understand how bacteria that cause the disease travel from the site of a fleabite to the lymph nodes, where the rampage truly begins.

In recent years, public health experts have increasingly explored the idea of eliminating the most dangerous malaria-causing parasite. But they have questioned whether getting rid of this species, called Plasmodium falciparum, would allow other species of the parasite to simply jump into the gap...
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When I jetted off to South America a year and a half ago, my doctor sent me with a bottle of Ciprofloxacin in case of an unfortunate bout of food poisoning. I thought little of it then, but what does it mean when millions of travelers head to developing countries with antibiotics?

An experimental medication that targets a protein in Ebola virus called VP24 protected 75% of a group of monkeys that were studied from Ebola virus infection, according to new research conducted by the U.S. Army, in collaboration with Sarepta Therapeutics, Inc. The study was published this week ...
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Jason Roberts, a virologist at the Victorian Infectious Disease Reference Laboratory in Melbourne, Australia, creates three-dimensional simulations of viruses showing how the molecules that make up the capsid and genome might move in very short periods of time. I visited Jason in his laboratory ...
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We’re in the midst of an outbreak of debate, people arguing the merits of vaccinations. Its symptoms include feverish rhetoric and noxious op-eds. In an attempt to stem the spread of unhealthy attitudes toward science and misinformation about vaccines, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation sponsor...
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By the dawn of the 19th century, tuberculosis had killed one in seven of all people that had ever lived. Doctors believed it was hereditary, but had begun to observe that fresh air and outdoor living could sometimes change the course of the illness. Physician and TB patient Edward Trudeau was co...
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Measles and Ebola have dominated the headlines in recent weeks, but there are plenty of other infectious diseases lurking among us. One is tuberculosis, which, in various times through its long history, was also known as the captain of death, the white plague, and consumption.

Researchers at the University of Toronto have discovered that Candida albicans — a leading cause of potentially fatal hospital-acquired infections — rarely develops resistance to combination drug therapy and, when it becomes resistant, it also becomes less dangerous.

Botanists from Trinity College Dublin have made a breakthrough discovery that could save barley farmers sleepless nights and millions of Euro each year: naturally occurring plant-friendly fungi prevent crop-ravishing diseases from spreading, and also aid plant survival in testing environmental c...
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University of Tokyo researchers have elucidated how Toll-like receptor 9 (TLR9) binds to pathogen DNA, activating the innate immune system. This discovery is vital for the design of new antiviral, antibacterial, allergy and other drugs targeting TLR9.

Combining experimental data from X-ray crystallography, NMR spectroscopy, cryoelectron microscopy and lipidomics, researchers have built a complete model of the outer envelope of an influenza A virion for the first time. The approach, known as a coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulation, has ...
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Not unlike an urban restaurant, the success of a bacterial cell depends on three things: localization, localization and localization. But the complete set of controls by which bacteria control the movement of proteins and other essential biological materials globally within the confines of their...
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Doctors treating Ebola patients while wearing “the full spacesuit” — protective gear, including waterproof hoods — are struggling with a clinician’s dilemma: what to do if they can’t use one of the oldest, most basic tools in medicine — a stethoscope.

The microbes that call the New York City subway system home are mostly harmless, but include samples of disease-causing bacteria that are resistant to drugs — and even DNA fragments associated with anthrax and Bubonic plague — according to a citywide microbiome map published today by Weill Corne...
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